Category: visual

“France’s highest court ruled today that an atypical Van Gogh landscape rumoured to be fake was, in fact, real – ending an eight-year-old squabble over the sale of the painting.”

A fire at the warehouse housing millions of pounds worth of Charles Saatchi’s art has destroyed much of it. “Modern art classics including Tracey Emin’s tent and Hell, by Jake and Dinos Chapman, may have perished in the blaze. Monday’s fire swept a London warehouse of leading art storers Momart. ‘Charles is absolutely devastated. We are waiting for Momart to give us final confirmation’.”

Adam Weinberg is making sweeping changes at the Whitney Museum in both its structure and direction. “The Whitney wants to have a larger international presence,” says Mr Weinberg…

How did New York art dealer Ely Sakhai get away with forging and selling a Gauguin? “What was perhaps most interesting was how well this hustle exploited—and exposed—the frailties of the art marketplace. It is a world in which surprisingly few people are willing to stick their neck out and call a fake a fake, so that even as Sakhai’s scheme racked up victims, virtually no one was willing to call him on it. The forger knew this secret of the art world: It is tolerant of frauds, so long as the victims are in far-off places like Tokyo and too humiliated to raise a fuss. As if delivering a judo move, he used the particular quirks of art dealers against them.”

What’s happened to the market for Irish art? “This year, the 10th that Irish sales have been held in London, a niche market that once seemed confident and youthful looked tired and middle-aged. Beset by supply problems and Ireland’s economic slowdown, these specialist auctions have lost their bounce.”

Paul Goldberger says the new World War II Memorial on the Capitol Mall follows the tradition of uninspired Washington architecture. “The new National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington seems to want to be majestic, but it’s really an opulent, overbuilt civic plaza. The most important thing about it isn’t the design, which is a vaguely classical set of colonnades by the architect Friedrich St. Florian, but the real estate it occupies.”

“The eight-month cleaning of Michelangelo’s statue of David is complete, the museum which houses the Italian Renaissance masterpiece said, almost four months ahead of its 500th anniversary celebrations.”

“The overall effect is of a glowing colossus restored to something close to its Renaissance splendour. Visitors to Florence should not expect a dramatic transformation, such as that wrought on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome in the 1990s; but, because of the greater uniformity of colour, it is easier than before to appreciate the statue’s exquisite detail – the vein that stands out ever so slightly on David’s upper right arm, for example.”

“The marks on “David” recount much of the statue’s life story, starting with an 18-foot-high marble bloc from Carrara that had been exposed to the elements for 40 years before Michelangelo began transforming it. It is very poor quality marble. Even Michelangelo had to spend four months polishing the marble before it was presented in public in 1504.”

Italian architect Renzo Piano will shortly be bringing his subtle, understated style to Chicago, as designer of the Art Institute of Chicago’s planned expansion. Critic Blair Kamen has visited Piano’s latest triumph – Dallas’s $70 million Nasher Sculpture Center – and says that, if the Nasher is any indication, Chicago can look forward to a classic building which actually seeks to serve the art it houses, rather than overwhelm it.